


Remember to Breathe

by Keiblade



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Eddie Kaspbrak, Adult Richie Tozier, Domestic Fluff, Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier Swear, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Stanley Uris Lives, bc stephen king can meet me in the fucking pit, but it's fluff bc that's my brand, i don't even know what kind of fluff to call this honestly, none of my kids are dying and certainly none of my damaged 40-year-olds, potty mouths the both of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 04:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21220970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keiblade/pseuds/Keiblade
Summary: Eddie should never have let his guard down.And now, as the price to pay for his momentary ignorance, he has a splinter in his palm.





	Remember to Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Hopped on the Reddie train as soon as it left the station (more like it hit me at full speed without warning) and I had to contribute this little fluff piece I came up with a couple weeks ago!   
Stan and Eddie both live because I avoid canon like it's the plague.  
Hope you enjoy!

Eddie should never have let his guard down.

This is the kind of shit that happens when he’s not constantly hypervigilant of his own body and all of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things that could happen to it on a daily basis. All it took was a text from Richie and his brain went out the window like a god damn bat out of hell. Instead of paying attention to what his hand was reaching for as he climbed down the stairs of the café he frequented, he was staring at his phone like a goofy, love-struck idiot.

Not that that was, y’know, a _bad _thing, but if he _hadn’t _have looked at his phone as soon as he heard the little custom chime in his jacket pocket—a nasally, heaving, infectious laugh that Eddie pretended to hate for years—he definitely would have noticed that the railing he grabbed for was desperately needing replaced, and horribly un-lacquered.

And now, as the price to pay for his momentary ignorance, he has a splinter in his palm.

Eddie can’t remember how old he was when he last had a splinter, but he remembers his abusively doting mother fussing over it like the world had ended right there in her immaculate bathroom lined with neat and tidy pill vials, indulging Eddie’s tears and hopelessness until she was finally able to pluck it from his skin. This was before he had discovered she was debilitating him to give herself a purpose, when he had still beamed up at her like she hung the moon instead of resenting every single painstaking, meticulous decision she made for him.

In other words; a very long time ago.

Eddie also can’t remember it being so aggravatingly _painful._

Logically, it made sense. Hands were filled with millions of little nerve endings that allowed all the dexterous activities hands were capable of, but it also meant that a sliver of wood lodged underneath the most superficial layer would hurt enough to notice. Unfortunately, like most humans, Eddie used his hands to do, well, _everything_, so there was no way _not _to notice it was there, putting quite the damper on his previously decent day. 

He stares at his palm with narrowed eyes, fuming with petulant rage. This should not be making him as angry as it is, but here he is, forty-one years old and furious with a ½-inch fragment of dead maple tree stuck in his skin.

_Alright_, Eddie reasons with himself, _you threw a metal fence spike into a psychotic alien clown’s mouth like a fucking Olympian javelin thrower, and made it out alive with your six closest, traumatized friends. You, Eddie Kaspbrak, divorced the clone of your mother to be with the one person that made you feel the opposite of what had been ingrained in you to feel since birth. Compared to those things? This is cake. This is easy street. _

He grasps his tweezers triumphantly and dives to grab the splinter, and ends up somehow lodging it deeper under his skin and out of reach.

Eddie seethes a garbled, pissed-off yell through his teeth as he slams his fist down on the counter and lets the tweezers fall into the sink.

“God. _Damn it.” _

At the same time Eddie starts losing his woefully short patience, Richie announces his arrival with a long, abhorrently relieved sigh and Indian take-out (not Chinese, oh god, _never_ Chinese literally _ever_ again).

“Ahh, AC, at last!” Richie exclaims. “Jesus _fuck, _it is _way _too hot for October.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, listening to the rustling of plastic bags and food containers being assembled out in the kitchen. The scent of _tikka masala _makes his stomach rumble, making him even more impatient with the infinitesimally small piece of wood creating a huge, ridiculous dilemma in his life.

“It’s LA, dumbass.” Eddie replies flatly, “the only temperature that exists here is ‘too hot.’”

“Yeah, but it’s _October,” _Richie complains, each syllable dragging on a childish whine, “spooky season was always chilly back in Derry.”

“We also almost died in Derry.” Eddie finds himself quite unsettled with how easily he’s able to say those words, but he didn’t have the scars in his back and his shoulder—or the PTSD—from anything less-lethal. “Like, multiple times. We almost died multiple times in our hometown, Richie. I’d rather not experience spooky season there again for the rest of this lifetime.”

Richie appears in the doorway so suddenly that Eddie jumps a little, cradling his splintered left hand with his unmarred right one. “What the hell, dude, don’t just sneak up on me like that!”

Richie cocks his head at him, leaning his weight against the frame. His wonky, shit-eating grin perches happily below his scrunched nose, never far from home. “It’s chow time, Eds! What, are you jerkin’ off in here or something?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says monotonously, snatching the tweezers from the sink. “I was thinking of your mom.”

His gangly husband snorts, adjusting his crooked black frames to sit squarely on his face. Eddie bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling, but it’s a half-assed effort. He knows Richie would be able to tell, anyway. “God Eddie, it’s so sad that you need tweezers just to find your dick. Can’t imagine what that micropenis life is like, what with my 15-inch schlong.”

“They’re not for my dick, you fuckshit.” Eddie grumbles, grimacing a little at how pissy he sounds. He forces himself to exhale, deep and slow. “Sorry,” he whispers, a guilty afterthought.

Richie raises his brows at the elevated level of irritation in Eddie’s voice, his smirk softening at the edges. He moves behind him and drapes his annoyingly long arms over Eddie’s shoulders sympathetically, smiling into the crook of Eddie’s neck. “Okay, okay, then what _are_ they for, crabby-pants?”

Eddie glowers at him without any actual bite. Begrudgingly, he can already feel the tension draining through his limbs like blood flowing from a wound just from feeling Richie draped against his back. He presents his hand as best he can, his left shoulder, the one that It _had _managed to pierce through, cramping in protest as he lifts it towards Richie’s face. “This,” Eddie states simply.

Richie adjusts his glasses, squinting more out of habit than actual necessity, to inspect Eddie’s over-sanitized palm. Once he discovers the problem, he feigns a horrified gasp, fingers delicately coming to his mouth in shock, “Oh my stars! Does dear ole’ Eddie Spaghetti have a splinter?”

Eddie sighs towards the ceiling, because _of course _Richie chose _now _to evoke the southern debutante persona. “You are literally impossible.”

“How the heck did _you_ get a splinter, Eddie?” Richie demands curiously, a laugh lurking in the corners of his voice, “isn’t it written specifically in your job description to _avoid_ these kinds of things?”

Eddie bites back the disgruntled sound that starts in his throat, because the son-of-a-bitch had a point and he absolutely _hates _it. Eddie Kaspbrak, the man who carries around a useless inhaler just for the sake of comfort rather than actual need, is much too _careful, _too _cautious,_ to have something this _absurd _happen to him.

“Okay, one: not even _remotely _what my job entails at all, and two:_ your_ dumb ass distracted me with a stupid meme and I grabbed an ancient hand-railing without looking. So really,” Eddie retorts indignantly, jabbing an accusing finger into Richie’s temple, “this is _your _fault.”

“Need some help getting it out?” Richie asks, pointedly ignoring Eddie’s comment. He makes a claw with his pointer finger and thumb, imitating little tweezers pinchers, and lightly squeezes Eddie’s unscarred cheek. “Use the force to get splinter out, I will, young _padawan.”_

A bubble of laughter races its way out without warning—he can’t help it, Richie’s Yoda impression is more Richie _as _Yoda, which is essentially what a train wreck sounds like—but Eddie does his best to act perturbed because he needs to maintain _some _level of authority between them. Who else is going to keep Trashmouth Tozier in line? “Excuse you, I am _perfectly _capable of getting it myself.”

“I can see that,” Richie replies confidently, his grin on the sharper side of soft. Eddie flicks Richie between the eyes.

“Seriously, Rich, I’m fine.” He pecks his husband on the cheek, always scratchy from the stubble, and ushers him gently out of the bathroom. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

At first, Eddie thinks he’ll put up a fight in his own eccentric way, but then Richie shrugs his shoulders, sauntering down the hall like he’s instructed to. _“Ooo-kayy,” _he sing-songs, his voice reeking of so little faith, “but if you take too long, some garlic naan is gonna’ end up missing!”

“Don’t you touch my naan, asshole!” Eddie shrieks, reaching for this little sliver out of sheer desperation, now that his dinner was on the line, “I will end your fucking life!”

Despite his warnings, Eddie begins to hear truly indecent eating sounds coming from the kitchen, Richie peppering in a pornographic moan here and there that manages to both piss Eddie off and make him contemplate how he can be so enamored with someone so obnoxious (it was the height difference, it _had _to be).

The battle with the splinter only lasts another couple minutes until it starts to drastically wane, Eddie getting so frustrated with his futile attempts that his hands start to fidget in the panicky sort of way that occurs when he lets himself stay inside his head for longer than he means to. Getting lost in his thoughts had never resulted in anything beneficial; not as a child, a tween, and especially not now after having the luxury of remembering every single moment of his supernatural trauma.

The tweezers fall from his shaking fingers for the second time and he finally calls it before he lets himself get enraged enough to surprise even himself. After breathing in and out, counting the seconds of each long inhale and even longer exhale, he swallows his gargantuan pride like it’s a bitter pill, choking it down through sheer desire to get well.

“…I need help, Richie,” Eddie laments, just loud enough to carry down the hall. His voice wobbles, despite himself, but he quickly packs that away to be embarrassed about some time later, preferably when he has some food in his stomach and he doesn’t have a splinter fucking up his perfectly good day.

Richie is at the bathroom door at alarming speed, like he bobbed his head and materialized down the hall straight out of _I Dream of Jeannie, _but in reality it was most likely just Eddie not being accustomed to the length of Richie’s spindly legs and how quickly they could get him from point A to point B, or how rapidly Richie was willing to drop whatever he was doing for the sake of Eddie’s needs. It had been more than a year since they remembered what they meant to one another, but it still took some getting used to—feeling protected without feeling smothered.

“You got it, pardner.” Richie drawls; a hideous, yet regretfully charming, caricature of John Wayne. Eddie must do something with his face, because Richie elicits the same laugh that caused this whole bitch of an unsatisfactory situation in the first place—wide and open and utterly honest with his happiness and who caused it—and all Eddie can think about, besides trying not to encourage his husband’s antics, is how to make Richie laugh like that more often. All the time, ideally.

“Alright,” Richie proclaims, gently nudging Eddie’s shoulders down until he sits on the closed lid of the toilet, “let’s see what we’re working with here.” Richie takes his own seat on the rim of the bathtub and grasps Eddie’s hand, accidentally touching the tender entry point.

Eddie winces, hissing through his teeth. Richie’s hand instantly relaxes its grip, long fingers adjusting their strength as his face pinches with guilt.

“Sorry, Eds,” Richie mutters, biting his lip, and suddenly Eddie is thirteen years old again, watching his best friend with his mess of unruly hair do the same thing at the edge of the quarry, grasping his skinny arm with shaking hands to seclude himself in his cage of self-doubt, now that the usual jokes had failed one too many times. Vulnerability was a facet of Richie Tozier that rarely made a public appearance, even among the Losers—even among _Eddie_—and in the time it takes for Eddie to register that it’s crawled its way out of its deep, dark cave, it slinks back to the depths for another 30 years, a lopsided smirk sealing any cracks in his aggressively facetious facade.

That same lackadaisical smile slides on his face now, right on cue, with little thought or effort. _He’s had practice, _Eddie thinks briefly, and just that idea as a real concept is enough to make his chest hurt.

“You’re fine, numbnuts,” Eddie says gently, relaxing into their banter—warm, familiar, authentic to their story—and nudges Richie in the side with his cotton-clad toes to get to work. “I’m tougher than I look, remember?”

Richie’s eyes, magnified by his far-sighted glasses, flicker towards a tell-tale spot on Eddie’s cheek. The scar was the only remaining reminder of Henry Bowers and his twisted, sadistic legacy that Eddie had helped cut short, ripping a knife out of his own face to do so. Saying he’s fond of the memory is too gentle a phrase because, frankly, it was a terrifying experience and, yeah, it fucking _hurt_ for God’s sake, but the pale mark that bled into his frown line was a permanent testament to what Richie said he had always been capable of: being brave when it mattered, even when he was stricken by fear.

Still, Eddie is taken off guard when Richie’s thumb smooths down that scar in a fleeting moment of open affection. The noise that busts its way out through his stammering rib cage isn’t glamorous in the least, but it does the job of putting Richie back into a good head-space, so he can’t be too embarrassed, even if he’s blushing like he used to when he’d catch Richie idly holding his calf in their shared hammock, wondering if it ever held the same meaning to Richie as it did to him.

Seeing the way Richie looks at him now—the way he always had, but without any hesitation, without any fear—Eddie realizes he doesn’t have to wonder, anymore.

“Alright, nurse,” Richie declares, back to his typical, man-of-many-voices self (this time it’s what Eddie _assumes _is supposed to be British), opening his free hand towards Eddie, “scalpel, if you please.”

Eddie gives Richie a look, but hands him the tweezers.

Richie pinches the tweezers a couple times—“to make sure they’re on,” he says, even though Eddie knows it’s to firm his grip with the hand that now suffers nerve damage, thanks to shoving Eddie slightly to the left and receiving his own skin-deep reminder of Pennywise the Asshat Clown—and then focuses on Eddie’s palm.

“Awright, luv, this lil’ troublemaka’ will be out of our hair lickety split, ma’k mah words!”

“Richie, for Christ’s sake, you’re doing Cockney now,” Eddie laughs, “are you operating on my hand, or are you cleaning my fucking chimney?”

“Who says I can’t do both?” His eyes stay down as he concentrates on making the area to grab the splinter more accessible, much more tenderly than Eddie would have expected. “Maybe I saved up all my chimney-sweep pounds and got my medical degree.”

Eddie grimaces, humming skeptically. “Not sure how much I’d trust a chimney sweep with the label ‘MD.’ It’s, like, sketchy in a Patrick Bateman sort of way.”

Richie fixes him with a stare. “You know what? You’re absolutely right, Spagheds. I should stop what I’m doing and take my multi-faceted talents where they’ll be _appreciated._”

He makes to get up in a dramatic exit, but Eddie quickly reigns his ass back in with an exasperated noise. “I’m kidding, you fucker. Please work your chimney sweep and/or hand doctor magic, dick.”

A private smile grows on Richie’s face, one that he probably isn’t even aware of as he concentrates on making Eddie feel better, and the phrase _cute, cute, cute _pops into Eddie’s head like it’s as natural as breathing.

It’s funny, how that can be, because breathing is something that _didn’t _come naturally to him. Learning to breathe was a constant struggle, day in and day out. He suffocated under his mother’s chokehold until he felt the only way to get from one day to the next was to pop a cocktail of medication that he couldn’t pronounce, only to discover that it was her own special brand of imprisonment. Fear robbed air from his lungs if he hyperventilated from the constant _too much _of life, or if it took physical form in the shape of a rotting, oozing leper that sought to infect him with decay—_dirty, dirty Eddie, what are you looking for?—_or if it contorted its limbs and crawled across the floor with a horrendous excuse for laughter, glowing eyes and manic, psychotic grin caving his chest in so that every breath felt like it was moving through tar. Breathing became an actual impossibility when he overexerted himself in any way, shape, or form, that even when he was at rest he found himself reaching for his inhaler, never far from his grasp, because he was in a constant state of potential energy, perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop, always on guard and waiting, waiting, waiting for his lungs to be saved by one click of a button.

Breathing has always been a work in progress; something that he’s had to fight for, tooth and nail.

And then Eddie is, once again, drawn to _that _summer, where there were so many instances of being strangled by fear, but even _more_ instances where breathing became so much easier.

Riding his bike with the Losers—his real, _true _friends—in every direction they could manage unsupervised, when he could feel the summer air against his skin and feel the nagging thought of what his mother would think fade out of his mind for hours at a time, laughing himself breathless. Jumping hundreds of feet into the quarry in a split-second of fearlessness and submerging deep into the water, sighing with reprieve when he finally decided to surface instead of hungrily gulping down air. Fighting an embodiment of his and all of his friends’ fears together with everything in his scrawny, semi-broken body and screaming with all of the fury he kept like a badge of honor against his chest, even if it meant he had nothing left to inhale afterward.

And with Richie… with _Richie. _

At the arcade, when Richie wouldn’t shut the hell up about how he was going to take him to school in _Street Fighter_ and lost almost every single time, but he was laughing so much all the while that Eddie wondered if he just liked the fact that they got to play _together. _At the playground, when they would claim the swings before anyone else and Richie used the time to see how high he could swing before leaping from the top of the arc, hovering in the air with the sun creating a halo around his silhouette, before he stumbled and crashed into the mulch with scraped knees and bellowing laughter; and then Eddie attempting the same thing—albeit from a much less dangerous height—Richie encouraging him with glasses askew and smile wide until Eddie jumped too, crashing into his friend and careening them both to the ground, laughing at the sky.

In the clubhouse, when curiosity won over Eddie’s desire for comfortability in the hammock, and he shimmied over to Richie’s side to see what comic he was reading and Richie happily obliged, explaining the plot up to the current panel and inserting his own take on the characters’ dialogue until Eddie physically felt himself come unwound, his eyelids drooping and head lolling to his friend’s warm shoulder.

There, calmer than he could ever remember being in his life, his brain a wonderful shade of quiet, he forgot what it was like to have ever had trouble breathing at all.

And that was funny, too, because a second later Richie would adjust so that he could put his arm around Eddie’s shoulder to hold the comic book more easily between them, and all the air would leave his lungs in one startled breath. It wasn’t the usual terrifying feeling of his lungs not expanding, no matter how much he wanted them to, but it was something that formed a knot in his gut that made breathing into something he should do carefully, so as not to disturb the fragility of this moment between them. One stray breeze would rip straight through the feeling growing in his chest, the one he was too scared to label, like a scissor’s blade through gossamer fabric.

That’s how it’s always been, though, hasn’t it? An eternal push-pull between the two of them for as long as he can remember. Bickering that led to harmless tussles on the ground, actual arguments that resulted in soft apologies and bandaged souls. Racing against the wind together on feet or by bike, outrunning a malevolent force whose only desire was to swallow them down into the dark. Richie acquiescent to Eddie’s desire for medication that didn’t work because he hated seeing Eddie legitimately upset or hurting, the same man putting his foot down and forcing him to let go of his inhaler, his psychological crutch, and telling him to _just breathe, _because he’s always known that he could.

Breathe in—_you’re braver than you think—_breathe out.

The next breath he takes—sharp, biting—shudders out of him wetly, and it cascades into a fit of tears that takes Eddie completely by fucking surprise. He doesn’t have time to process the fact that he’s _crying _until Richie looks up at the noise in a panic, his expression heartbreakingly stricken. The hand holding Eddie’s cups his face on reflex, thumbing the tears spilling over.

“Eddie, what’s happening right now?” Richie asks, his voice shaking with concern. “Are you okay?”

Eddie nods his head jerkily, rubbing at the tear tracks on his cheek one-handed. “I don’t know—I mean, yeah, I’m fine, I just,” he sniffles, taking a second to even his breathing, “I have no idea what the fuck this is,” he explains around a tight laugh. “Sorry, what a shit-show.”

Richie looks at him cautiously, his thumb now smoothing over Eddie’s face more for comfort than anything. “…Okay?” He replies, paper-thin. He huffs a laugh, running a hand through his hair. “I didn’t realize a person could actually suck _that _badly at removing a splinter, but damn, I sure proved _that _wrong.”

Eddie snorts around the last of his tears, shoving him a little in the good shoulder—the left one. “I think it’s still just… hard to process. That we’re here, after Derry.” He wipes at his face again, hopefully for the last time, with the back of his hand. “Like, this is gonna’ sound so stupid, but the fact that you get to help me remove a god damn splinter out of my hand, in and of itself, is so ridiculously domestic to me that my brain has to play catch up with the idea that I even deserve this; a life after Pennywise with everyone… with you. Before Mike called me, I never knew this was something I could _have_, or even _wanted, _because I was forced to forget how overwhelmingly good it felt to have—“ his hand gestures vaguely between them, but in a way that encompassed more than just the two of them, “—_this.”_

He looks Richie in the eye now, and instead of focusing on his tear-soaked face in the reflection of his husband’s glasses, he engrosses himself in being forthright. “It scares the shit out of me, sometimes, how much I don’t want to lose you.”

Richie blinks owlishly, a soft _oh _of comprehension whispering into the space between them, and then his eyes crinkle, so deeply fond, as he makes a sympathetic sound in his throat. “Oh, Eddie, you big sap, c’mere.”

Eddie doesn’t get much say in the matter as Richie squeezes his head to his chest, planting loud smooches on the crown of his head, smoothing his hair. Eddie scrambles inelegantly against his torso. “You fucking asshole,” he seethes between giggles, threat level at zero, especially when Richie plants softer pecks against his temple and he’s almost struck speechless with how much he loves him, “I swear to god, you are such an _ass.” _

Richie leans back enough to smile at him, smitten and unapologetically delighted, and then kisses Eddie on the forehead so, so gently that Eddie has to try incredibly hard not to lose his shit again, or risk his dignity going down the metaphorical drain.

“I’m not goin’ anywhere, Eddie,” Richie breathes, placing his lips against the pale mark on Eddie’s cheek, which never fails to make him shiver with warmth.

He tucks a stray hair behind Eddie’s ear and moves his mouth there, and Eddie has to, again, remember how to inhale. “I’m like herpes, Eds: you’re never gettin’ rid of me, baby.”

Eddie punches him in the arm—the good arm, always the good arm—laughing around the one, final tear he doesn’t bother holding back strictly because it’s Richie, the only person he would ever allow to see him the way he is now: flustered and fucking infatuated. _“Suck a cock.” _

Richie leers back at him deviously, and it’s like instant regret roundhouse-kicks Eddie in the face. “If it’s yours? Anytime, any day, beautiful!”

Eddie picks up the bar of soap on the counter and pretends to throw it at him. “You ain’t gettin’ any of this dick until you get this splinter out of my hand, fucknut.”

“Consider me enticed,” Richie answers, practically radiating with self-satisfaction. As if fate answers his call, he gets the perfect grip on the splinter and pulls it out with one smooth yank, holding it up to his face like a prize catch of fish.

_“Gotcha, _ya little bastard!” Richie cheers, disposing of the cursed piece of wood into the trash with a descending whistle as it falls, like it’s a plane spinning into a nosedive. He blows a kiss with his middle-finger raised as it hits the bottom with an unceremonious _clink. _

Eddie pads his thumb with trepidation over the spot previously occupied by a fraction of stair-railing and audibly sighs with relief when no pain registers through his nerves. “Thank fucking _Christ.” _

“What’d I tell ya, Eds?” Richie hums, grasping Eddie’s fingers until they lace with his own, “Richard Tozier, doctor of hands and sweeper of chimneys, worked his god damn magic, am I right?”

“Alright, fine, assface, you did. Congrats, you can add it to your weirdly specific resumé.” Eddie plucks the tweezers out of Richie’s hand so he can set them on the counter, laying them to rest until the next time they’re needed, so he can hold Richie’s other hand in his own.

They aren’t that much bigger than his—Richie’s hands—not anymore, not like when they were kids and one day Richie was all of a sudden dwarfing him in every sense of the word, but they still _feel _bigger; long fingers and bruised knuckles and the slightest freckles peeking from his skin like the sun dappled through trees. They feel heavy in the way that they grip Eddie’s fingers like he’s afraid they’ll slip through his grasp if he doesn’t hold tight enough, like he needs to be anchored to Eddie in some way, shape, or form, or he’ll vanish into the part of his brain that could only be triggered by spine-numbing fear.

Eddie gets it, because they all do, in one way or another. Bill puts his guilt and his terror into words, weaving stories that keep his loss stitched into his heart, or else it might float away _(like a balloon, of course). _Bev and Ben keep each other close; Ben staving off any nightmares lingering in the dark corners of Bev’s memories, though her dreams after Derry have been beautifully calm, for the most part; Beverly keeping Ben from hiding away in self-hatred, in insecurity, so he can keep building safe havens that bring friends close. Stanley makes plans, keeping everything between them organized and precise so that all the pieces stay joined, so that they can all keep in touch and come together and keep love fresh in their mind instead of horror. Mike, who created the tether, keeps it strong between them all, protects it with the same deference he protected them all in the cistern.

They’re all bound by thread that’s seen better days, and they’d sooner die than let it come undone.

Richie seems to notice Eddie getting lost in thought—he’s been watching him out of the corner of his eye for years, after all, so Eddie’s not surprised—so he takes Eddie’s hand and turns it palm-up to place his lips where he had once been hurting, and Eddie almost, _almost, _starts crying again, because he only now realizes that it’s the hand that once held a scar, a scar from glass that forged a bond between seven misfits so deep that it sunk into his bones.

“Better?” Richie soothes, lopsided grin making his face crease in a way that makes Eddie forget how to respond with words for a moment, the delicately sharp memory still vivid enough that the can taste the mist of the river in the air, hear the boxcars rattling against the rails. Instead, he takes Richie’s hand, the hand that pulsed blood against his own almost 30 years ago, and pulls him close enough to kiss him with warmth, smiling against his lips when he feels Richie startle for just a second—still in disbelief, after all this time—and then respond in earnest, Richie’s fingers carding through his hair and gripping the strands at the base of his neck.

They part softly, Eddie resting his forehead against Richie’s long enough to take one long breath between them. _Breathe in, breathe out._ “You have no idea.” He leans in and kisses him one more time, and he knows down to his marrow that he’ll never, ever, get tired of being able to do this with Richie for the rest of his fucking life. “Thanks.”

Richie smirks softly, thumbing the crease under Eddie’s eye. “Any time, any day, beautiful.”

Eddie returns the smile, rolling his eyes to try to distract from the fact that he’s blushing. “Our food is probably cold by now,” he says, pouting mostly for show, but also with actual loss for his sweet, sweet garlic naan.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you, Eddie, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but there’s this hip new invention called a microwave that—“ he cackles when Eddie grabs a t-shirt from the floor and throws it at his head.

“That’s so funny!” Eddie barks sarcastically, “because _I’ve _been meaning to tell _you _that there’s this hip new trend where I shove my foot up your ass for being an insufferable dickwad.”

Richie blinks at him. “Weird fetish, but hey, I’m up for anything.”

“Are you up for my other fetish where you shut the hell up for two fucking seconds?” Eddie retorts.

“Hmm,” Richie hums, pretending to ponder Eddie’s remark, stroking his five o’clock shadow in lieu of a beard, “don’t know about that, sweetheart.” He grips Eddie’s hips, pulling him the tiny amount forward to put the space between them in the negatives. “Unless you can convince me?”

Eddie raises a brow, thrumming with static now that a challenge was involved, and grips Richie’s shirt collar in his fist, bringing them nose-to-nose.

_“That, _I can do,” Eddie replies eagerly, grinning with teeth, and once there’s no distance between them to speak of, eating suddenly dwindles down the list of current priorities.

They eventually do make it to the kitchen, Eddie privately delighted that Richie only _pretended _to eat his naan, but it’s not like he was that worried to begin with. He knew Richie wouldn’t have touched it, just like he knew that Richie planned on helping Eddie with his splinter as soon as he asked for help. They’ve been doing this for as long as he can remember—and now he _can _remember, even if it comes with the caveat of remembering the most terrifying time of his life—and honestly? He looks forward to doing this with Richie, this perpetual push-pull, for as long as he’ll have him (and he knows that Richie will have Eddie for as long as Eddie will have Richie—which is forever, really.)

When Eddie goes to bed that night, holding Richie close and falling asleep to the sound of his heartbeat, the last thought that crosses his mind is how he finally feels safe enough to stop holding his breath.

So he closes his eyes, and exhales.

It’s the easiest thing he’s ever done.

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case it's a little too vague, I headcanon Richie pushed Eddie out of the way of It's claw, but they still both got stabbed; Eddie through the left shoulder, Richie through the right. Eddie has muscle damage in his arm and can't lift it past a certain height, Richie has permanent nerve damage in his right hand. 
> 
> I have a twitter ---> @keithedrifter  
Please leave kudos and/or comment if you liked it! This is my first contribution to Reddie fic, so it would be really appreciated ^.^


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